Rudolf Steiner

Greek and Germanic

Mythology in the Light
of Esotericism
 Editorial Note

These lectures were not public ones, but

were given to members of the Theosophical
Society founded by H. P. Blavatsky; who
were accustomed to specific terms to desig-
nate planetary evolution, the members of
the human being, and so on. In his written
works, Rudolf Steiner used terms of which
in 1903 he said that for certain reasons I
make use of an occult language that differs
somewhat from the expressions used in
published Theosophical writings, but which
are of course in full harmony with them in
meaning.

The terms which were exclusively used later by Rudolf

Steiner, terms to which the present-day reader is ac-
customed, will be found in the notes at the end of each
lecture.
 1. THE PROMETHEUS SAGA

Berlin, 7th October, 1904.

You will have come to realise from many of my lec-

tures that a deep significance underlies the world of
saga, that myths are the expression of esoteric truths.
Today I should like to speak of one of the most inter-
esting of these sagas, one that has a bearing on the
evolution of our fifth root-race.1 At the same time I
shall be able to show you that the esotericist can pass
through three stages in the understanding of saga.
First, the sagas live in one or other of the peoples and
are understood exoterically in their literal meaning.
Then disbelief in their literal interpretation begins, and
educated people search for their symbolic meaning.
Behind these two interpretations are hidden five oth-
ers, for every saga, has seven interpretations. The third
stage is the one in which they can, in a way, be taken
literally again. Of course, you have first to come to un-
derstand the language in which they are expressed. To-
day I want to speak of one that is not very easy to un-
derstand, I want to speak of the Prometheus saga.
In a chapter in the second volume of her Secret
Doctrine2 Madame Blavatsky refers to this saga, and
what she writes will enable you to see what a profound
meaning is hidden in it. Nevertheless, it is not always
possible to say the last word in published works. To-
day we can go a little beyond the explanations given by
Blavatsky.
Prometheus belongs to the world of Greek saga. He
and his brother Epimetheus are the sons of a Titan,
Japetus. The Titans are themselves sons of the ancient
Greek god Uranus and his wife Gaia. Uranus means
heaven, and Gaia earth. And let me draw your atten-
tion to the fact that Uranus is to the Greeks the same
as Varuna to the Indians. Thus Prometheus is a Titan
and one of the sons of Uranus, as is also his brother
Epimetheus. Chronos (Time) usurped the throne of his
father Uranus and obtained the rulership for himself.
For this he was in his turn dethroned by his own sons
and, with all the other Titans, cast into the underworld.
Only Prometheus and his brother Epimetheus re-
mained loyal to Zeus during these events. They fought
side by side with Zeus against the other Titans.
Now Zeus had created the human race. But human-
ity had become rebellious, hence he wanted to exter-
minate it. Then Prometheus made himself humanity's
representative. He devised a plan to give men the
means whereby they could save themselves and be no
longer entirely dependent upon the help of Zeus. Thus
we are told that Prometheus taught men the use of
writing and of the arts, but above all the use of fire. Be-
cause of Zeus's anger Prometheus was chained to the
Caucasus, and was forced to endure there much suffer-
ing over a long period.
Further, we are told that the gods, with Zeus at
their head, then caused Hephaestus, the god of the
smiths, to make a statue of a woman. This female
statue was provided with all those external attributes
which adorn human beings of the fifth root-race. This
woman was Pandora. She was sent to bring gifts to
mankind, first to Epimetheus, the brother of Pro-
metheus. Prometheus warned his brother not to accept
the gifts, but the latter allowed himself to be per-
suaded. All these gifts of the gods, except one, were
showered upon humanity. They constitute for the most
part human miseries and sufferings. Only the gift of
hope was withheld in Pandora's box.
Thus Prometheus was chained to the Caucasus and
a vulture gnawed continuously at his liver. But he
knows something which will ensure his rescue. He
knows a secret of which even Zeus is ignorant, a secret
which Zeus is trying to discover. But Prometheus does
not betray the secret, although Zeus sends to him Her-
mes, the messenger of the gods.
Now in the course of the story we are told of a re-
markable release. Prometheus can only be freed
through the intervention of an initiate. Such a one was
Hercules, who performed the twelve labours. The exe-
cution of these twelve labours was the achievement of
an initiate. They symbolise the twelve tasks of initia-
tion. Moreover it is said of Hercules that he had under-
gone initiation into the Eleusinian Mysteries. Neverthe-
less someone had to be sacrificed, and so Chiron the
centaur was sacrificed for Prometheus Chiron was al-
ready suffering from an incurable malady. He was half
animal and half man. That is how Prometheus was res-
cued.
This is the exoteric saga of Prometheus. In it lies the
whole history of the fifth root-race, and in it real Mys-
tery-truth is hidden. The story was told in Greece as
genuine saga; but it was also represented in the Mys-
teries, so pupils in the Mysteries had a knowledge of
the destiny of Prometheus before them. And in
Prometheus and his destiny they were meant to see
the past and the future of the whole of the fifth root-
race. You will only be able to understand this if you
bear in mind one thing.
In the middle of Lemuria there came about for the
first time what we call incarnation, incarnation in the
sense in which we have human beings to-day.
Mankind was guided by great leaders and teachers
whom we call the sons of the fire mist. To-day the
fifth root-race is also guided by great initiates, but our
initiate are different from the leaders of mankind at that
time. You must now come to understand what this dif-
ference was. There is a great difference between the
leaders of the two preceding root-races and those of
our fifth race. The leaders of those races too were
united in a White Lodge. But they did not undergo their
earlier evolution on our earth planet, but in another en-
vironment. They descended to earth already mature,
descended as human beings of higher development, in
order to instruct men who were still in their infancy, in
order to teach them the first arts which they needed.
This period of instruction lasted through the third,
fourth, and right into the fifth root-race.
This fifth root-race originated in a little band of men
who were singled out from the previous root-race.
They were led into the Desert of Gobi and later dis-
persed over the earth. Their first leader, the leader who
gave the impulse for this evolution of mankind, was
one of those whom we call the Manus, he was the
Manu3 of the fifth root-race. This Manu is still one of
those leaders of the humanity who descended at the
time of the third root-race, one of the leaders who had
not gone through their evolution only on the earth but
who brought maturity to earth with them.
It was not until the fifth root-race that the develop-
ment of men such as we are ourselves began, the de-
velopment of men who, like us, have undergone their
evolution on the earth alone, men who have evolved
from their lowest stages entirely on the earth.
Thus we have some human beings who are already
exalted Leaders and Masters, and others who strive to
become such Leaders. Within the fifth root-race, there-
fore, we have Chelas and Masters4 who have passed
through all that our earth has passed through. One of
the Masters who has the guidance of the fifth root-race
is destined to undertake the guidance of the sixth. The
sixth root-race will be the first to be guided by an
earthly Brother as its Manu. The earlier Masters surren-
der the leadership to mankind.
With the dawn of our fifth root-race we have the
beginning of all that we call the development of the
arts, the development of skill and dexterity. The At-
lanteans still led quite a different life. They had no in-
ventions and discoveries. They worked in an entirely
different way. Their technique and their skill were quite
different. It was only with our fifth root-race that what
we call engineering and craftsmanship in our sense de-
veloped. The most important discovery was that of fire.
You must be quite clear about this, you must be quite
clear how much of our widespread engineering, indus-
try and craftsmanship depends upon fire. I think that
the engineer will agree with me when I say that with-
out fire nothing of modern engineering would be possi-
ble, so that we may say that the discovery of fire was
the fundamental discovery, the discovery that gave the
impulse to all others. And you must also understand
that at the time when the Prometheus saga arose, the
term fire comprised everything in any way connected
with warmth. Fire was also understood to be the cause
of lightning. Fire was the comprehensive expression for
the causes of all phenomena of warmth.
The consciousness that humanity of the fifth root-
race stands under the sign of fire is what is primarily
expressed in the Prometheus saga. And Prometheus is
none other than the representative of the entire root-
race. His brother is Epimetheus. Prometheus means
thinking in advance, Epimetheus means thinking af-
terwards, reflecting. There you have the two activities
of human thought, clearly contrasted in the man of re-
flection and the man of forethought The reflecting man
is the man who allows the things of this world to work
upon him, and then thinks; such thought is the Kama-
Manas5 thinking. To-day the man of the fifth root-race
still thinks predominantly like Epimetheus. However in
so far as he does not merely allow what is already
there to work upon him, but becomes an inventor or a
discoverer, to that extent he is a Prometheus. Inven-
tions could never be made if all men were like
Epimetheus. An invention occurs when a human being
creates something that was not there before. It is first
there in thought and then the thought is converted into
reality. That is Prometheus-thinking. This Prometheus-
thinking in the fifth root-race is Manas-thinking6.
Kama-Manas and Manas run like two streams side by
side in the fifth root-race. The Manas-thinking will
gradually become more and more widespread.
This Manas-thinking of the fifth root-race has yet
another peculiar characteristic, which we understand if
we look back to the Atlantean root-race. In Atlantis
there was more of an instinctive thinking which was
still bound up with the life-force. The Atlantean root-
race was still able to make motor-power from the force
in seeds. Just as to-day we have in our railway coal-
yards a kind of reservoir of power for the movement of
engines and freight, in the same way the Atlanteans
had stores of plant-seed containing power, which they
were still able to convert into power to drive those air-
ships which are described in Scott Elliott's book on At-
lantis7. The spirit of the Atlantean man was still able to
subjugate living nature; the spirit of the fifth root-race
can only control lifeless nature, the latent forces that lie
in stone, in minerals. Thus the Manas of the fifth root-
race is chained to the mineral forces, as the Atlantean
race was bound up with the life forces. All Promethean
force is chained to the rock, to the earth. Hence, too,
Peter is the rock upon which the Christ built. It is the
same as the rock of the Caucasus. The man of the fifth
race has to seek his evolution on the physical plane.
He is chained to the inorganic forces.
Try to acquire an idea of what we mean when we
speak of this engineering, this technology, of the fifth
root-race. What is its purpose? Viewing the matter gen-
erally, you will see that when intelligence, the power of
Manas is applied to the inorganic, to the mineral world,
the results of all these powers of invention and discov-
ery, however prodigious, are by and large in the service
of human egotism, of men's personal interests. Starting
from the earliest inventions and going on right up to
the telephone, one of our latest inventions, you will see
what mighty forces have been made serviceable to us.
But what ends do they serve, what is it that we trans-
port by rail and steamer from foreign lands? Food-
stuffs. We order food by telephone. It is really human
karma that begins with these inventions and discover-
ies in the fifth root-race. This is what an objective study
of the matter must make clear to us. Then we shall un-
derstand that the higher man, that higher man who has
been plunged into matter, is in fact, during the fifth
root-race, chained to it. Therefore it is in matter that
his karma will reach its fulfilment.
If you enter into esoteric realms, you will find that
man's principles have a specific relationship with his
organs. Sometime I will explain this more fully. To-day
I will mention only that our seven principles have a
specific relationship with the organs of the human
body.
First we have what we call the physical. This has an
occult connection with the upper part of the face, with
the root of the nose. When the physical structure of
man took its start (man was formerly purely astral, and
then built himself into the physical), it began with this
part; the physical structure began at the root of the
nose and built itself up from that point, so that the eso-
tericist recognises the root of the nose as belonging to
what is essentially physical-mineral.
The second principle is Prana, the etheric body;
with this we associate the liver. The liver has a specific
occult connection with the etheric body.
Then comes Nama, the astral body. This has devel-
oped its activity in the structure of the digestive organs,
represented by the stomach. If the astral body did not
have the specific stamp in man which in fact it has,
then the human digestive organs, including the stom-
ach, would not have the specific form which they have
to-day. If you study firstly the physical basis of the hu-
man being, secondly his etheric body, and thirdly his
astral body, you have what in the fifth root-race is fet-
tered to the mineral element.
Through his higher bodies man wrests himself from
his fetters again, and mounts up to something higher.
Kama-Manas works its way up again, in Kama-Manas
man frees himself again from the pure nature-basis.
Therefore there is an occult connection between Kama-
Manas and the organ through which man is severed
from his nature-basis. There is an occult connection
between the lower Manas and the umbilical cord. If
there were no Kama-Manas in man, then the embryo
would not be severed from the mother in this manner.
If we pass on to the higher Manas, we find that it
has a similar occult connection with the human heart
and with the blood.
Buddhi (Life-Spirit) has an occult connection with
the larynx, and Atma (Spirit-Man) with what fills out
the entire man, with the Akasha contained in man.
These are the seven occult, relationships. In consid-
ering them we have to stress the importance for our
fifth root-race of the relationships with the etheric and
the astral bodies. And if you bear in mind what I said
earlier of the control by the Atlanteans over Prana (the
life-force permeating the etheric body) you will see that
in one way the Atlantean stood at a still lower stage.
His etheric body still had the original relationship with
the external ethers and because of this he controlled
the Prana of the outer world. Because man has risen to
one stage higher, his work has become one stage
lower. That is a law. If there is an ascent on the one
hand, there must be a descent on the other. Whereas
formerly man worked on Kama from Prana, now he
has to work with Kama on the physical plane.
You will see how profoundly the Prometheus saga
symbolises these occult connections. A vulture gnaws
at Prometheus's liver. The vulture symbolises Kama,
which really destroys the forces of the fifth race. The
vulture gnaws at the human liver, the basis of life; so
does this force of the fifth root-race gnaw at the essen-
tial life-forces of man, because man is chained to min-
eral nature, to Peter, to the rock, the Caucasus.
During the fifth root-race only human initiates are
able to bring release to fettered man. Hercules, a hu-
man initiate, has to go all the way to the Caucasus in
order to set Prometheus free. It is thus that the initiates
will wrest men from their bondage.
The human being who still has a connection with
the animal nature the centaur Chiron must make
a sacrifice. The man of earlier times must be sacrificed.
The sacrifice of the centaur is as important for the de-
velopment of the fifth root-race as man's release by ini-
tiates.
It is said that in the Greek Mysteries the future was
foretold to men. This does not mean that people were
given a vague abstract account of what was to happen
in the future, but they were given indications as to the
paths that are to lead over into the future. The great
Mystery-drama of Prometheus is an expression of what
is to evolve as human capacity.
By the three generations of gods Uranus,
Chronos and Zeus we have to understand three Be-
ings who were leaders of men one after another.
Uranus means heaven, Gaia the earth. If we go back
beyond the middle of the third race, the Lemurian, we
find no men as we now know them, but one man, who
is called in the secret doctrine Adam Cadmon 8 the
man who is still without sex, who does not yet belong
to the earth, who has not yet evolved the organs for
earthly sight, who still belongs to the Uranus-nature, to
heaven. By the marriage of Uranus with Gaia there
arose the man who descended into matter, and
thereby stepped into Time. Chronos (Time) becomes
the ruler of the second generation of gods from the
middle of Lemuria right up to the beginning of Atlantis.
The Greeks symbolised these leading Beings as, first of
all Uranus, later Chronos, and after that they went over
to Zeus. But Zeus is still one of the leaders who did not
undergo their training on earth, he is still one of the
immortals, as in fact were all the Greek gods.
During the fifth root-race mortal man is expected to
stand on his own feet. This humanity of the fifth root-
race is represented by Prometheus. The fifth race was
the first to acquire human skill and the primeval art of
fire-making. Zeus is jealous of this race, the race in
which men come to have their own initiates, initiates
who in the sixth race will take the lead into their own
hands. But humanity has to pay the price for this.
Hence its primordial initiate must first of all take upon
himself the sum of all suffering. Prometheus is the
archetype of the initiate of the fifth root-race, one initi-
ated not only into wisdom but into deed. He runs
through the whole gamut of suffering, and is released
by the man who makes himself mature enough to free
humanity little by little and to lift it above the mineral
realm.
The saga thus expresses great cosmic truths. That is
why I said at the outset that anyone who reaches the
third interpretation may take it literally once more. Ev-
ery saga undergoes change. It is derived from primor-
dial times and transforms itself at a certain point There
is a point in every saga at which it is to be taken liter-
ally again. In the Prometheus saga you have the vulture
gnawing at the liver. That can be taken quite literally.
The vulture gnaws at the liver of the fifth root-race.
This Promethean struggle with suffering is repeated in
the fifth root-race in every single man. What is here ex-
pressed in the saga is to be taken quite literally. With-
out this struggle the destiny of the fifth race would be
quite different.
Thus sagas can be interpreted in three ways. First
there is the exoteric meaning, secondly the allegoric
the human struggle thirdly, the occult significance,
where again a literal interpretation enters in. From this
you will see that so far as these sagas can be inter-
preted in this way, they originate in the Mystery
Schools, and are no less than the record of what has
been revealed in those schools as the great destiny of
man. Just as I was able to show you that Odin repre-
sents what took place in the Druid Mysteries, so in
Prometheus we have what the pupil of the Greek Mys-
teries experienced to give him energy for life in the fu-
ture9.

Notes on The Prometheus Saga

1. Root-races. The root-races are the main
periods of earth-evolution The fifth
root-race is the fifth main period.
2. The Secret Doctrine. Vol. 2, Part 2, Sec-
tion 6. (pp. 546 556 in the third edi -
tion.)
3. The Manu of the fifth root-race. In the
English version of An Outline of Oc-
cult Science, this Being is called the
leader of the Christ-initiates or the
leader of the Christ-oracle. (p. 177 in
the 1949 edition).
4. Chela means pupil of the Myster-
ies; Master means teacher in the
Mysteries.
5. Kama is the astral body, Kama-Manas the
intellectual or Mind-soul, the lower
Manas.
6. Manas. Here is meant the higher Manas.
In the book Theosophy Rudolf Steiner
calls it the spirit-filled Conscious-
ness-soul or Spirit-Self. (p. 57, re-
 vised English edition, 1954).
7. The Story of Atlantis, by W. Scott-Elliott,
published by the Theosophical Pub-
lishing Co., London, 1896. See also
Rudolf Steiner's Atlantis and Lemuria.
8. Adam Cadmon. See also Rudolf Steiner's
lecture given at Oxford, 22nd August,
1922, which appears in English in the
book Man's Life on Earth and in the
Spiritual World.
9. Unfortunately no report exists of the lec-
tures to which Dr. Steiner here refers,
but reference can be made to his lec-
tures given in Berlin, 29th, April, 1st
and 6th May, 1909, published in Dor-
nach, 1955, under the title Isis and
Madonna, Altearopaische Mysterien,
Die eurapaischen Mysterien und ihre
Eingeweihten. (Not yet published In
English)
 2. THE ARGONAUT SAGA AND THE ODYSSEY

Berlin, 14th October, 1904.

To-day I should like to speak about a very impor-

tant myth, also Greek, one which, like all myths, can
be interpreted at many different levels. We will endeav-
our to uncover its real kernel. But before going on I
should like to preface what I have to say by a few more
theoretic observations.
In the last number of Lucifer-Gnosis1 I stressed that
the last three culture-periods of Atlantis saw the begin-
ning of a particular influence on the human race which
still endures even to-day. It has to do with the fact that
men then became mature enough to work in what we
call our intellect. Before that time man was more a be-
ing of memory. Up to the fourth Atlantean culture-pe-
riod man's memory was especially developed. The fac-
ulty of intellectual combination, the calculating faculty,
in short, all that makes up our present-day culture, be-
gan in the fifth Atlantean period with the Ur-Semites.
And it was this that made the Ur-Semites capable of
originating the whole of the fifth, the Aryan, root-race.
The Aryan root-race had as its primary task the devel-
opment of the intelligence which is active on the physi-
cal plane. When such a new phase of human evolution
occurs, it becomes possible for new Beings, Beings
who up to that time had led hidden lives, to gain an in-
fluence on evolution. And in fact, since the fifth cul-
ture-epoch of Atlantis, a particular host of Beings have
participated in human evolution, the activity of whom
had not hitherto been noticeable. You must think of
these Beings as very highly evolved, far more highly
evolved than man at the stage he then was. But in a
certain way they had lagged in their development be-
hind the Beings who in the middle of the Lemurian
time had intervened in the affairs of the human race. It
was a fresh setback which took place at that time. The
Beings of whom I am now speaking belonged in their
whole nature to what we call the Moon evolution. They
went through their development on the Old Moon, but
they were not so far advanced as the Beings who were
able to intervene in the middle of the Lemurian time.
They had remained behind the normal development on
the Moon. They had advanced to the point of recognis-
ing that the faculties which man had now attained were
analogous to their own, to the point of recognising that
they could obtain control over those human faculties.
Up to this time men had not been Beings of intelli-
gence, now they acquired the intellect. And these new
Beings made use of this human intellect for their own
further development. Thus it came about that a phase
of human evolution now set in which we call the phase
of cold, objective science. Prior to this time there was
no such thing, and one day there will again be no such
thing. All wisdom hitherto attained in human evolution
has been fundamentally associated with love. Cold, cal-
culating science is under the influence of these back-
ward Beings. Thus the influence of these Beings, who
are still active, will come to an end only when our
whole intellectual activity, everything which we are ca-
pable of knowing, is again permeated with love. When
intelligence and love are once more united in the
higher wisdom, the influence of those Beings, who are
not visible on the physical plane, will disappear. To
make clear their influence, in the first place to the
pupils of the Mysteries, and then to mankind, was the
task of the Greek Mysteries
About the eighth century B.C., a very important
epoch sets in as regards these Beings. If you think of
the culture-epochs of our fifth root-race of the an-
cient Veda culture, then of the ancient Persian culture,
of the Chaldean-Egyptian culture, if you think even of
the time of the Druid culture, you will find that an ob-
jective, dispassionate science of knowledge did not ex-
ist. It first emerged at the dawn of the fourth culture-
epoch, which one can place in about the eighth cen-
tury B.C. With it there dawned an objective knowledge,
completely detached from all the rest of the contents
of the human mind. A Chaldean priest who cultivated
astronomy still sought to fathom the purposes of the
rulership of the world; and this can also be said of the
Egyptian and Druid priests; they sought to acquire in-
sight into the purposes of the world-ruler. A purely in-
tellectual knowledge first dawned in Greece. This
intellectual knowledge had been prepared step by step,
and emerged, bound up with the rest of human activ-
ity, under the influence of the Beings I have men-
tioned; it was fully released in the fourth culture-epoch
of the fifth root-race. Those who were initiated in the
Mysteries of that time, confronted by the external wis-
dom, looked upon the ancient wisdom, which had for-
merly been at the disposal of mankind, as something
lost, something which men must seek to regain.
Now there was a particular way of describing the
point of time in which this dispassionate, dry wisdom
separated itself from the all-embracing primeval wis-
dom. In the eighth century B.C., the passage of the sun
through the sign of the Ram, which then took place,
was experienced as the repetition of an earlier passage
through the same sign thousands of years previously. It
is well known that the sun moves forward through the
whole of the zodiac, through the Ram, the Bull, the
Twins, through Cancer, the Lion, the Virgin and so on,
so that it has already passed through the Ram many
times. The last time it had passed through the Ram,
man was in possession of a knowledge united with
love, and thereby of the primeval wisdom. This
primeval wisdom had now been lost, and had given
place to a culture of external wisdom. The priests of
the Greek. Mysteries expressed this whole process in
its occult significance through the profound symbol of
the Argonaut saga, in which the ram is the symbol of
the union of love and knowledge.
Let us first call to mind the whole of the myth. We
are told that Phrixos and Helle had to suffer many
things at the hand of their bad stepmother. Therefore
their dead mother appeared to Phrixos and advised
him to run away and to take his sister with him. She
gave him a large ram with a golden fleece, upon the
back of which they were to cross the sea. Helle fell off
and was drowned in the Hellespont, but Phrixos
reached Colchis with the ram. There he is said to have
sacrificed it and to have given its fleece to King Petus,
who hung it on an oak in front of a cavern. Later, the
Greek hero Jason, together with the most important of
the Greek initiates of the time, Orpheus, Theseus, Her-
cules and others, set to work to recover the fleece from
the alien people of Colchis. Through winning the hand
of the king's youngest daughter, Medea, he was en-
abled to bring it back to Greece. First he had to over-
come two fire-breathing bulls. Then he had to sow a
dragon's teeth. From the dragon's teeth grew armed
men, who began to fight. With Medea's help he was
able to bring this conflict to a successful conclusion. It
was she too who enabled him to capture the fleece and
to set out, together with it and her, on the homeward
journey to Greece. In order to deceive her father
Medea had taken her brother with her, had slain him
and had thrown his dismembered body into the sea.
While the lamenting father was collecting his son's
limbs she was able to continue her flight with Jason
into Greece.
In the eighth and ninth centuries B.C., the pupils of
the Greek Mysteries were taught the occult meaning of
this saga. They were taught that the Beings who made
use of the dry, dispassionate human intelligence had
now attained a special importance. The longing awoke
in them for the ancient culture which had obtained
when the sun had passed through the sign of the Ram
on the occasion before the last. That the twins Phrixos
and Helle were carried by the ram to Colchis means
simply that an earlier race the Persian-Iranian, with
its twofold nature (it stood under the sign of the gods
Ormuzd and Ahriman) had regained the union of
knowledge and love. This race had borne the fleece to
hidden realms. Still earlier, in Atlantis, this fleece, this
wisdom, had been the common possession of human
culture; then it had been carried into distant Mystery-
schools. It had to be brought back again. Thus the Arg-
onaut saga is an expression of the founding of the
Greek Mystery-schools.
Thus we are told that a primeval wisdom existed
among the people of Atlantis. It was then the common
possession of humanity. It had been lost and was now
only to be found in the caves and crypts of the pupils
of the Mysteries. But the Greeks established the Mys-
teries anew; by bringing the primeval wisdom back
again to Greece, Theseus, Orpheus, Hercules and oth-
ers became the founders of this Greek Mystery-wis-
dom.
A dispassionate, cold intelligence, which is objec-
tive, is introduced by Thales, Anaximenes, Socrates and
other philosophers. The Mystery-wisdom is united
with love. It is a wisdom which cannot be attained
without purification of the passions, the forces of
Kama.2 The other kind of knowledge can be obtained
without purification of Kama.
Thus the very important Argonaut saga puts before
us the transition from the third to the fourth culture-
epoch of our present root-race. Human culture, which
formerly was one stream, now separates into two
into mystery-wisdom and external knowledge. The one
stream was hidden it was the recovery of the golden
fleece but it was nevertheless effective. It had an influ-
ence on Greek art and culture. Only on external knowl-
edge was it henceforth to have no influence. This is the
saga of the voyage of the Argonauts.
The Odyssey too is concerned with the transition
from one race to another. The Odyssey has been given
the most varied explanations To-day I only want to in-
dicate the bare framework of the saga. In my
book Christianity as Mystical Fact I tried to make use of
its second stage of interpretation; to-day we will look
at the third.
Odysseus, who took part in the siege of Troy, by
his cunning and his cleverness, helped the Greeks to
conquer Troy. He made lone voyages, voyages in
which he went astray voyages on the water, be it
noted. He came to the land of the Cyclops and over-
came their one-eyed leader; then he went further, to
Circe, who, we are told, turned his companions into
swine. Then he descended into the underworld, and
made the acquaintance of the dead heroes of Troy.
Then he came under the influence of the sirens, who
lead men astray by their magic songs. We are further
told that roost of his companions succumbed to the
temptation, but that Odysseus caused himself to be
bound to his ship, and thus saved himself; we are told
how he then came to a place between Scylla and
Charybdis where his ships were in danger of being
wrecked. To save himself he had to pass through a
whirlpool. Then he comes to the island of Calypso, so-
journs there seven years and is enabled to leave by the
intervention of Zeus, who orders Calypso to let him go,
and at last he reaches his home country.
He is led by the goddess Pallas Athene into his
house and to his wife, who has had to withstand many
dangers because of the suitors who beset her. So she
unravels by night the weaving she accomplishes by
day, because she has promised her hand to one of her
suitors when the work is finished.
Now let us go through this outline of the Odyssey
as it is known to us from Greek occult wisdom. The
schools of initiation, in which was actually enacted
what I have just recounted, led the pupils on to the as-
tral and the mental planes3 in such a way as to enable
them to survey a stretch of human evolution, to survey
the period from the middle of Lemuria to the time
when in Greece, in the school of initiation which had
been founded by Jason together with Orpheus, The-
seus, Hercules and others, man was again able to find
the primeval wisdom. Thus the pupil was led on to the
astral and the mental planes and was shown the events
which humanity had to pass through between the mid-
dle of Lemuria and the point of time when the Trojan
war took place. The Argonaut saga is a picture of the
primeval wisdom. It shows us that it existed at that
time side by side with external knowledge.
What was it that was shown to the pupils of the
Mysteries in the Odyssey? Odysseus himself is its ex-
pression. Let us turn back for a moment to the middle
of the Lemurian time. Man was then in a state of transi-
tion from the hermaphroditic to the condition of sexu-
ality, in a state of transition from the condition of being
able to see without an external physical sense-organ to
that of seeing with the physical eye. Up to the middle
of Lemuria every man had one eye, which was then re-
placed by two external physical eyes. It was into this
phase of evolution that the pupil of the early Greek
Mysteries was transplanted. He had to experience the
transition from the first half of Lemuria into the second
half of Lemuria, into the time after the middle of
Lemuria up to the emergence of the second eye. The
Cyclopes were the men of the early Lemurian time.
Odysseus came to know these men upon the astral
plane. After this time, human astral bodies were
plunged into matter which was becoming denser, more
solid. We then come so were the initiates instructed
to the first periods of Atlantis. The Atlantean ac-
quires more and more the capacity to make use of the
forces of life, to apply these forces for his own ends.
They were fully developed astral forces which the At-
lantean possessed, and it was only on the astral plane
that a Greek could be transported into them. This was
the time, so often spoken of in occult writings, when
the Atlantean races lapsed into the wildest arts of black
magic. This epoch was brought before the pupils of the
Greek Mysteries in these shifting scenes. This was the
age when. human passions became so distorted under
the influence of the forces of black magic that their as-
tral bodies resembled those of the lowest animals. This
was the picture which the Turanians presented when
they lapsed into these wild magic arts. The astral body
was so changed under the influence of these black arts
that it could only be expressed symbolically as the
changing of the comrades of Odysseus into swine. This
was the moment of human evolution which the Greek
initiates of that time experienced. Then Odysseus de-
scended into the underworld. In the world of Greek
mythology this always signified an initiation. Whenever
it is said of a hero that he descended into the under-
world, the narrator wants to express the fact that the
hero concerned has been initiated, made acquainted
with things that lie beyond death. Odysseus was an ini-
tiate and the Odyssey itself is the description of his ini-
tiation.
Now we go on to a point when, after the Atlantean
flood, men became acquainted with the first operations
of those Beings of whom I have spoken, acquainted
with the effects of external culture, science and art,
with forces which influenced intellectual life after the
flood. The first periods of purely external physical cul-
ture were brought before the initiates as the tempta-
tions of purely worldly arts, worldly culture. These are
the siren songs of the young fifth root-race. It was of
these siren songs of the young fifth root-race that so
much is said in occult writings. For on the one hand
we have the great wisdom teaching of Manu 4 who, in
the sub-race which was the originator of the fifth root-
race, draws men's attention to the fact that their intel-
lect has to lift itself up to the divine. This found its ex-
pression in the Vedas, and in what the Persian
Zarathustra left to his co-religionists. But then we have
the pure culture of the intelligence, which diverts men
from what was developing in them under the influence
of Manu. In all occult writings you find described the
events which then took place. Manu chose a small
band and went with them into the Desert of Gobi or
Sebamo. There it was only a handful that remained true
to him, whilst the others were unfaithful and dispersed
in all directions. This important event was shown to
the candidates for initiation that is to say, they were
shown how the Manu had chosen some of the Ur-
Semites, but that of those chosen only a small number
followed him, whereas the others ran into destruction
through following the siren-song of external culture.
Then a still more important moment of human evo-
lution was represented by the passage between Scylla
and Charybdis. What is it which now really begins in
mankind? The essential Kama Manas culture now
first begins. It had gradually been prepared up to this
point; it is only now that it really begins. Our fifth root-
race possesses preeminently this Kama-Manas culture.
Kama is in the astral, and even to-day is still active in
the astral body. But Manas is what is active in the
physical brain. The man of the fifth root-race thinks
with the physical brain. It is only in a future phase of
evolution that Kama, the astral body, will be so ad-
vanced that it will be able to think. To-day Manas has
taken hold of the physical brain. We have to pass be-
tween the hindrances on either side Scylla-Manas
and Charybdis-Kama. The passage of Odysseus is a
picture of this. There is on the one hand the astral
whirlpool of the instincts, appetites and passions into
which man can fall; on the other hand there is the
physical intellect chained to the rock. The rock occurs
also in the Prometheus saga, where we meet the rock
again. The human intellect is exposed to all the dangers
of the physical, of the rock. Man sails between the
physical intelligence and the whirlpool of the astral life.
If he has accomplished that successfully, if he has rec-
ognized the dangers of the passage, and has neverthe-
less kept his footing, then he conies to Calypso, to the
hidden wisdom. Then he can take a look into the future
of humanity, then he can undergo the testing time,
which lasts seven years. That is why Odysseus remains
with the nymph Calypso seven years. Every man who
seeks initiation goes through a seven-year testing pe-
riod, and this is represented by the sojourn with Ca-
lypso. Only then can he reach the point to which the
soul aspires. Read Homer's Odyssey! He means that
man is in search of his own soul. He who really wishes
to understand the Odyssey cannot accept the view of a
modern investigator who asserts that Polyphemus and
the Cyclopes only mean that Etna had erupted and that
the scene of the conflagration seemed to Odysseus like
the eye of a giant.
At last Odysseus returns home as a beggar, without
any external property. This means that the man who
had recognized the unimportance of the external world
and of worldly goods, seeks his soul's home not in
Maya, but behind Maya, thus in a mystical sense he re-
turns home as a beggar. That he is truly wise is shown
by his being led into his house by Pallas Athene. In all
esotericism the soul is represented as feminine, it is al-
ways the feminine nature that is chosen as the symbol
for the striving of the individual soul. Goethe calls it
the Eternal Feminine. In Medea in the Argonaut saga,
in Penelope, we have to understand the real soul, to
which Odysseus seeks the way again. The Virgin Mary
too, in the Christian religion, is the striving human
soul, only there the significance is infinitely deeper.
Strictly speaking, Penelope is the human soul in the
fifth root-race. The fifth root-race has to cultivate hu-
man intelligence. Human intelligence is utterly unfruit-
ful when it is only turned upon itself. When it has
something that one can call a content, then the intelli-
gence can be applied to it. Intelligence is a network
which is spun around things we have from some other
place. When external experience teaches you some-
thing, you can weave around it with your intelligence.
When the higher occult wisdom teaches you some-
thing, you can also weave around it. Men say that oc-
cult wisdom contradicts reason. Nothing contradicts
reason! When something new dawns on their horizon
men have always said that it is contrary to reason. But
the intellect is only there for purposes of combining.
Out of itself it can win noting. This barrenness of the
intellect, which is nevertheless the real soul of the fifth
root-race, is expressed in the perpetual weaving and
unraveling of Penelope's cloth. Odysseus is led by wis-
dom. The initiate must find the way to the soul of the
fifth root-race, but he will only unite himself with this
soul in the right way if he is guided by Pallas Athene.
Pallas Athene too is a feminine deity, another soul-
force, wisdom, the real guide. But man has to reach in-
telligence through many by-paths, in so far as they are
paths of development for there were many by-paths
in the Lemurian epoch. And in this journey Pallas
Athene must be his guide. This was brought before the
pupils of the Mysteries in Greece and this is what
Homer wanted to express in his profound saga.
What is described in the Odyssey is initiation as it
was carried out in Greece at that time an initiation
which was a repetition on the astral and mental planes
of experiences from Lemurian times right down to the
time of the Mysteries themselves. Odysseus is the
clever man, the cunning man, and Troy was over-
thrown through his ability. The clever, intellectual man
is the man of the fifth root-race. But to be able to find
his way rightly in the fifth root-race, he must again on
his devious path seek his home country, his Penelope.
The man who is merely cunning and clever would
never find the right way. He must first come out of
himself, broaden his view, by looking back on the long
journey of the human race. Odysseus is the represen-
tative of the cunning Kama-Manas man, who has to
wander through many byways, in order to be led back
again to the soul of the fifth root-race.

Notes on the Argonaut Saga and the Odyssey.

1. The article here mentioned, which first
appeared in the periodical Lucifer-
Gnosis was later published and forms
chapter 1 of Atlantis and Lemuria.
2. Forces of Kama. The forces of the astral
body.
3. Astral plane and Mental plane. These are
the soul-world and spirit-land in
Rudolf Steiner's Theosophy.
4. Manu. Described in An Outline of Occult
Science as the Christ-initiate or the
leader of the Christ-oracle.
 3. THE SIGFRIED SAGA

Berlin, 21st October, 1904.

In order to acquire a right understanding of the

Siegfried saga we must first find its place in the great
cosmic happenings in the world. Before our present
root-race there were four others; we are in the fifth.
The first sub-race of the present race consists of the In-
dian folk; we call this the Spirit-race, because the im-
port of the fifth race was first given by the Manu in its
spiritual form to this sub-race. The second sub-race we
call the Flame-race, the race to which Zarathustra gave
a religion. The third sub-race was the star-race, the
race of the Chaldeans, Babylonians, Assyrians, from
which later sprang the Israelite tradition. The race of
the Greek and Roman peoples, whose first representa-
tives are mainly to be found in Greece and Rome, be-
came the fourth sub-race. It is the one in which Chris-
tianity first took root, in Asia Minor, Greece and Rome.
But it is our fifth sub-race which was to be the most
strongly influenced by Christianity and was to carry it
over into the sixth. Christianity came to our fifth sub-
race as a tradition, after the beginning of the Christian
era. But before this, for some centuries before Chris-
tianity was introduced into these regions, and even ear-
lier, ancient Druid initiations were in existence. These
were maintained until it became quite obvious that the
evening of these preparatory Celtic races had come.
You must understand that all the streams I have
named do not reach the northern world. None of the
currents which passed over the Flame-race, the Star-
race, the Greco-Roman race, got as far as the northern
regions. In the north there still remained something
from the culture of Atlantis which had been brought
over by Atlantean initiates. Wotan was an initiate of the
northern peoples. He is none other than the bearer of
the elements of Atlantean culture into these parts. Ev-
erywhere in these northern regions the Druid initiation
was still practised. I have already said that one of its
founders, one can say its chief founder, was named
Sieg. And in these northern parts something happened
rather like what happened later in Palestine at the
Foundation of Christianity. Sieg renounced his body
and placed it at the disposal of a higher individuality.
Hence later the transformed Sieg was named Odin.
Odin is the highest initiate of the northern Mysteries.
He is the bearer of the spiritual culture of that time.
Sieg therefore was the Chela of the north who placed
his body at the disposal of the higher, more spiritual
Odin. He himself lived later as an initiate Master. Sieg
is a quite special case. He is not able to introduce a
movement as the Master Jesus 1 did after the founda-
tion of Christianity. Sieg had to lead this northern cul-
ture to its downfall. He is called upon to guide the
northern peoples until the fifth sub-race of the fifth
root-race reached them from the south. The ancient
Chela Sieg is the one who had to lead the northern
peoples into tragedy. Hence he is also called Sieg-urt,
which means, he who leads into the past. Fried is
the same word; it means, that which leads to death,
to destruction. It is still found in the word Friedhof,
(graveyard). The very same Chela who had paved the
way for the great initiate who is to lead the northern
culture to its downfall. Its spiritual content declines and
is replaced by the rising Christianity. What I am now
saying is a prophetic augury which found expression
everywhere in the later northern Mysteries. We have
to be a race that is led to its death. That is the note
which sounds forth in the various Mysteries of these
northern peoples. The whole of the future event, which
had been indicated in the scriptures since primeval
times, and which was to take place in the future, was
predicted in the northern Mysteries, and through this
prediction arose what later became the content of the
Nibelungenlied. The second part of the Nibelungenlied
gives us the fulfilment of the Nibelungs' karma.
 I must draw attention to one feature which we al-
ways find in such a situation in human evolution. Be-
fore a new phase takes root the earlier phases of evolu-
tion have to undergo a brief repetition. This repetition
is plainly to be seen in the north. We are shown how
all that has been experienced here in the north since
the time of Lemuria and Atlantis has to be overcome
before these northern nations will become mature, will
really develop up to the level of the Christianised fifth
sub-race. He in whom all that lives is the initiate
Siegfried. Let us briefly run through the salient points
of the Siegfried saga.
To begin with, life at the Court in Worms revolves
round three heroes: Gunther, Magen and Giselher. We
are further told that the hero Siegfried is wooing Brun-
hild. At the same time we are told that Siegfried is ac-
knowledged to be a personality out of the ordinary.
This he certainly is, for he has slain the possessor of
the Nibelung treasure; in the fight with the dragon he
has made his body hard as horn; he has won the cloak
of invisibility. Thus he has two qualities that are always
shown by the initiates of pre-Christian times; they are
invulnerable and they are unrecognisable. They are
made invulnerable by something that has preceded
Christianity, has preceded the spirit. In the Gospel it
says: And there are three that bear witness ... the
Spirit, and the water, and the blood.2
1 John, V, 8.
It is the blood which must be conquered, and it is
the blood which made the heroes invulnerable in the
times preceding Christianity. But these invulnerable ini-
tiates are always vulnerable in one spot. Achilles is an
example of an initiate of these early times. He was
plunged into the Styx and was vulnerable in his heel.
Siegfried is bathed in the blood of the dragon and is
vulnerable in the shoulder. The initiate can make him-
self unrecognisable to his own people. He can do that
through the possession of the cloak of invisibility. It is
this that makes the possessor of these higher occult
faculties invisible to the outer world. The possessors of
the Nibelung treasure had these faculties. They origi-
nated in Atlantis, Atlantean initiates in particular had
them. But they were also retained by the initiates of the
fifth race and hence by Siegfried. He came into posses-
sion of the Nibelung treasure. What is this treasure?
It expresses the fact that the northern peoples sup-
plied the basis upon which the fifth sub-race could
arise. We also call the race the race of the great discov-
eries and inventions, the race that has conquered the
entire physical plane and that waxes great amid the
harsh difficulties of the external world. It has both to
possess things, and to develop its possessions. We
shall see that Nibelungenhort (the treasure of the Ni-
belungs) is merely a modification of the old word
Nifelheim, Nebelheim (land of mist). This it is what in
the north is recognized as the physical earth, the earth
in the moment of becoming physical. It is a firmer hold
on the physical that this race of forerunners propagated
and opposed to Christianity. Nibelung treasure repre-
sents earthly property. It is something that the forerun-
ner possesses, which it is permissible for him to pos-
sess, because he can guard it in a suitable way.
Now you all know how the Siegfried saga goes on
in this old form. It is not the oldest form, but it is the
one that concerns us. You know that Gunther woos
Brunhild of Iceland. Twice Siegfried overcomes Brun-
hild, who believes that it is her suitor Gunther who has
conquered her. Gunther woos her, but Siegfried in the
cloak of invisibility fights at his side, and is glad that
she becomes Gunther's wife. Now Kriemhild later in a
weak moment betrays to Brunhild that in reality it was
not Gunther who had vanquished her, but that
Siegfried was there invisibly. Brunhild is incensed by
this and plots to kill Siegfried. But she has yet to learn
how she can do it. She wins to her side Hagen of
Trony, who dwells at the court. We can recognise the
figure of Hagen as deriving from the ancient Druid
Mysteries. Hagen is a significant name among the an-
cient Druid initiates. Not only is he an initiate who rep-
resents the highest streams of spiritual life, but, what is
more important here, he illustrates the fact that the
predecessor always comes into conflict with his suc-
cessor. Siegfried is the immediate predecessor of
Christianity. Hagen belongs to an earlier Druid stream.
Hagen therefore is sent for to bring about Siegfried's
ruin. To this end Kriemhild must betray that he is vul-
nerable in one place. Here the significance of this place
is revealed. Kriemhild betrays that he is vulnerable be-
tween the shoulders, in the very place where the Cross
will have to be borne. He has not yet got the Cross.
These early peoples have not yet got Christianity. To
this spot the Christian initiate will have to come so
says the Siegfried saga because it still lacks Chris-
tianity, because the place where the Cross has to rest
is still vacant. Hence Siegfried is still vulnerable in this
spot. Siegfried, who brings the Sieg-initiate to Fried,
to rest, is vulnerable in the spot which Christianity will
later render invulnerable. There Siegfried too is over-
come by the powers which have remained over from
earlier stages of northern culture. Hagen kills him and
thus illustrates the supercession of the preceding
northern races by the fifth sub-race. The import of this
transition finds expression in the Siegfried saga.
 What are these northern races, the forerunners of
Christianity, fighting against? They are fighting against
all the old that has remained behind from Atlantis.
They have continually to be on their guard against it.
Thus in the northern races there still lives something
against which the soul of the northern peoples has to
protect itself, something that still forces its way in from
the remnants of Atlantean culture. An earlier stage of
culture has been preserved into the fifth sub-race. But
those who have remained behind in the Atlantean cul-
ture are a hindrance to further development, they have
to be overcome. Hence the struggles that followed are
represented by Gudrun. This Gudrun is the soul of the
northern peoples. In an older version she wages war
against the great initiates who continually come over
from Asia from the remnants of old Atlantis. The initi-
ates, the remnants of the Turanians, come over from
Asia in a series of incarnations. This is why we also
meet there the famous Attila, identical with Etzel, who
was initiated in the Atlantean culture. In. fact the his-
toric Attila, who was called the scourge of God by his
own people as well as by the Europeans, was an initi-
ate who fought at the head of his people with quite
outstanding occult forces. Hence a battle with the
Huns was quite rightly described as a fight in the air.
To anyone who knows these things it is quite clear
what is meant. Attila shrank from nothing that he en-
countered in Europe; from the Pope alone, of his own
free-will, he drew back. The races of northern Europe
knew that they had to beware of the influence from the
East. Christianity knew that this influence could do it
no harm.
Now in the later saga we are told that Kriemhild
plotted to take revenge on those who had killed
Siegfried. She achieves this by throwing in her lot with
these Atlantean elements and succeeds in wooing At-
tila's following to her cause. She becomes Attila's wife.
Before that she had lived for a while at the Burgundian
court. She came into possession of the Nibelung trea-
sure and had been a great benefactress in her use of it.
But the inevitable enemies, who belonged to an earlier
culture, and who were represented by Hagen, had
sunk the treasure in the Rhine. Now how wonderfully
the events which followed are described; Kriemhild
clung to her plan to destroy her enemies, her old
northern enemies, with the help of Attila. They were
enticed to Attila's court and on their way there they
met the very spiritual power by which they were to be
superseded. On the Danube, in Rudeger of Bechlaren
and his wife Gotelind, they encounter Christianity. It is
Christianity that is to supplant the northern European
culture. Here we have an indication of the dawn of
Christianity. Those who have paved the way for it go to
meet their downfall. They are murdered at the court of
the Huns. Kriemhild had her revenge but she herself
must perish. How is this brought about? Kriemhild is
really a metamorphosis of Gudrun, with the difference
that in the earlier time the tragic outcome had not
taken hold of men's hearts. It is Gudrun herself, the
folk-soul who slays Attila. In the later version she
unites herself with Attila. The soul of the earlier culture
avenges itself on the culture which has brought about
its downfall. Kriemhild herself perishes.
If you are studying the matter from the literary
point of view, you will naturally ask how it comes
about that, right at the end, at the court of the Huns,
Dietrich of Bern, Hildebrand and all the Germanic he-
roes are introduced, for they belong to a period that
has already gone over to Christianity. They are Chris-
tian heroes. Christianity brings death to the ancient
folk-soul. First we have the dawn of Christianity in
Rudeger of Bechlaren, and then Christianity reaches
the essential element of the ancient folk-soul. This is
not something told after the event, but something ex-
perienced as prophecy within the Mysteries long be-
fore the emergence of Christianity. These events were
the subject of Mystery-initiation. Initiation into the
Mysteries includes not only initiation into truths of the
present, but also into truths of the past and of the fu-
ture. Apocalypse always forms part of it. The Siegfried
saga had long been the apocalypse of the northern
peoples.
It is not a saga that has arisen somehow or other
out of separate fragments, as philology supposes. The
folk does not make literature in this way. Only some-
one who has no clue to what goes on in a folk-soul
could say this. The sagas are nothing but an account, a
rendering of what had taken place in the crypts of the
Mysteries. Just as in the south we have the word Mys-
tery, so in the north a similar mystery event is called a
Mahr, from which we get the word Marchen (fairy
tale). Viele Wunderdinge melden die Mahren alter
Beiten.3) The Wunder (wonder or miracle) is just a
sign. There are things that must be regarded as events
on a higher plane. The northern saga-world is so inter-
esting because it expresses something that is not to be
found in the entire range of southern saga. The sagas of
the southern peoples express a step up; in them the
people have always received something which leads
them upwards. Of course, the Indian, Persian, Babylo-
nian, Chaldean peoples and those who succeeded
them at later stages also had their tragic figures. We
need only remind you of the Chronos saga. But here in
the north we have the thing in its most developed
form, for these people had so long to wait, so long to
live in a state of expectancy. Theirs was a culture of
preparation, which lasted until a higher initiation
evolved. And that is the important point. It was a cul-
ture that descended so low, that its initiate is human, is
man. The Indian initiate is the Bodhisattva, then come
the Rishis, later in Greece we get the sons of the sun,
such as Hercules and Achilles, Only when the initiate
had descended to the lowest rung of the ladder do we
get, here in the north the initiated man who lacks only
one thing, what is comprehended in the Christ. The
Christ he has not got. Thus this culture has come so far
that it has human initiates and the man-become-god. In
the north we encounter the divine man the divine
Man who for us is the Christ in an attitude of expec-
tation, with the vulnerable spot which Christianity will
have to cover.
Thus you have four levels which come one after an-
other. First you have Wotan, who comes over from At-
lantean times; then Odin. Wotan corresponds with
what develops during the second sub-race of the fifth
root-race. The last before Siegfried is Balder, the sun-
hero. He corresponds with what develops in the
Chaldean-Babylonian-Assyrian epoch. But whereas
what developed in the south is an ascending, a pro-
gressive culture, here in the north we find a mood of
suspense, of expectancy, of waiting for something to
happen Then we come down from god to man; and
while the southern sub-race developed further,
Siegfried became the initiator of this culture of sus-
pense. It is steeped in tragedy. Because this northern
culture is coming to an end you have the tragic deaths
of Baldur, of Siegfried.

Notes on the Siegfried Saga.

1. The Master Jesus is described by Rudolf
Steiner as a being who sees through
history as the guide of the Christian
spiritual stream, with relatively short
intervals between each death and re-
birth. He is not to be confused with
Jesus of Nazareth. See also Lecture 7
of Rudolf Steiner's Course on the
Luke Gospel.
2. I John, V. 8.
3. This is the first line of the Nibelungenl-
ied. Rudolf Steiner has spoken of the
Nibelungen on various occasions, in
lecture 8 of the Course entitled The
Spiritual Beings in the Heavenly Bod-
ies and in the Kingdoms of Nature,
given at Helsingfors in April, 1912,
and in Das innere Verhltnis der
Sprache zu den Cedanken. Das Ni -
belungenlied and Wilhelm Jor-
dan given in Dornach, 28th March,
1915, and not yet translated.
 4. THE TROJAN WAR

Berlin, 28th October, 1904.

Since there are some newcomers present to-day, I

should like briefly to explain that in the course of these
lectures I have tried to show how the various myths
and sagas are expressions of an esoteric content, and
that one only needs to know how to interpret their lan-
guage to find on occasions deep esoteric truths in
them. To-day I should like to speak of one in particular
of those sagas which are remarkable in that, while on
the one hand they are sagas, yet at the same time they
have an external meaning on the physical plane, that is
to say, they record quite specific external events.
Before I begin to speak about this saga, I should like
to refer to something else that most of you already
know, but it is a thing which one has to stress again
and again. In the course of our fifth root-race, thus, in
the time lying between the end of Atlantis and the be-
ginning of the next, the sixth, root-race, an advance in
human evolution of the highest importance will be
made; the leaders of mankind, their Manus, will arise
in mankind itself. None of the great leaders who
brought men forward, the leaders who gave them their
important impulses during the earlier root-races, went
through their own evolution entirely on earth; they un-
derwent it in part on other planets, and thus they
brought from other worlds what they had to give to the
earth as great impulses. The Manus of Lemuria and At-
lantis, as well as the chief Manu of our fifth root-race,
are super-sensible individualities, who underwent the
sublime schooling which enabled them to become the
leaders of mankind, on other planets. But during the
fifth root-race highly developed human individualities
have trained themselves so that from the sixth root-
race onwards they will be capable of becoming the
leaders of mankind. The leader of the sixth root-race, in
particular, will be a man as we are, only one of the
most advanced, indeed the most advanced among
men. He will be a being who began his development
when incarnation started, approximately in the middle
of Lemuria, one who has always been a man among
men, only that he was able to advance more rapidly,
and one who has gone through every stage of human
evolution. This will be the fundamental characteristic of
the Manus of the sixth root-race. Such beings have to
undergo all kinds of initiation, they have to be initiated
again and again. Hence the fifth root-race from its out-
set has always had initiates, men who were so initiated
as to enable them to walk their own freely-willed path.
This was not the case during the Lemurian period, nor
even in Atlantis. Both in Lemuria and Atlantis those
who helped mankind forward, those who ruled and
guided mankind, those who were political leaders and
leaders of great religious communities, were under the
influence of higher beings. They were directly depen-
dent upon higher Beings, Beings who had gone
through their own development on other planets. It is
not until the fifth root-race that mankind is left free.
Then we have initiates who have a connection with
higher Beings, but to whom such comprehensive guid-
ance is not given; more and more freedom is allowed
to the initiates of the fifth root-race in matters of detail.
Guidance is given on general lines, not only to the initi-
ates, but to those who are stimulated by them. Im-
pulses are given to them, but yet in such a way that it
is out of their own spirituality that they have to carry
things out.
The five sub-races that we know are: first, the sub-
race of Spirituality; this is the sub-race from which the
Indian cultural community arose. Then we have the
sub-race of the Flame, that is the Persian cultural com-
munity. Then we have what we call the ancient
Chaldean sub-race, the sub-race of the Stars, of which
the Israelite people forms a branch, indeed the most
important branch. The fourth cultural community is the
one which produced Greece and Rome, the sub-race
of Personality. The fifth sub-race is that of
the World, the culture within which we ourselves live,
the culture of the present stage of evolution, which will
be replaced by a cultural community coming from Asia.
Last time I discussed the great initiates of the north-
ern region. On that occasion I pointed to the fact that
the initiate, or anyone who is in any way connected
with initiation, has a distinguishing mark, and that to
be invulnerable is one of these symbolic distinctions.
This invulnerability, which we find in Siegfried, is also
to be found in Achilles. In fact in the myth with which
Achilles is associated, a deep esoteric meaning is hid-
den. You must realise that what I put before you comes
about gradually in the fifth root-race. The Manus so ar-
ranged the guidance of the race that the entire leader-
ship of mankind was in the hands of the priesthood,
which received its inspiration direct from higher spiri-
tual beings, from super-men. This priesthood could be
entrusted with the classification of mankind. It would
have been impossible to carry out a division into castes
rightly, except in cultural communities guided by
priestly rulers. Hence caste is only to be found in the
authentic priestly cultures, in ancient India and in
Egypt, where initiated priests were at the head of af-
fairs, initiates who followed no impulses derived from
kama but only intuitions from above, and they could be
trusted to bring about that important classification
which in its origin in the Egyptian and the Indian castes
was fully justified. When you study these castes, you
find that they are an expression of the whole plan of
development of the fifth root-race.
According to this plan, the guidance of this fifth
root-race should pass over gradually from the priestly
outlook to that of the world. A worldly king, a king who
was not a priest, would, in the early stages of the fifth
root-race, have been quite impossible. It was impossi-
ble in Atlantis, when the leader still worked with other
forces, when the impulse did not yet pass through the
thinking mind. But in the fifth root-race there had to
come a halt, guidance had to be entirely withdrawn
from cosmic powers and handed over to those who re-
ceive divine inspiration. Hence in the Indian and Egyp-
tian cultures we have priestly rulerships. The priest is
the Regent, it is from him that everything emanates.
The priest belongs to the first caste, the warrior to the
second. After that come the castes which follow purely
worldly occupations. We come down in stages to those
who are concerned with agriculture. Little by little
these castes are to attain independence.
Thus the first caste was the priestly one, the second
the warrior caste. We never find that the temporal rela-
tionships which emerge in the course of evolution are
the same as those which show themselves externally in
space. I beg you to note that if a spatial relationship is
to become a temporal one, it occurs in the ratio of four
to seven, occurs in such a way that the fourfold ex-
pands to sevenfold. Thus during the fifth root-race the
four castes find their outward expression in time in the
gradual training to independence of the seven sub-
races. The ratio of four to seven comes from a quite
specific law. To-day I will merely say that evolution
takes place in such a way that in the first sub-race, in
all essential matters, guidance is entirely in the hands
of the priests In the second sub-race we have one led
by the priest-kings. Zarathustra, the true magician, is
the counselor of priest-kings. During the third sub-race
the rulership is able to pass over to worldly kings, who
however still follow the guidance of the priests or the
priest-kings. It is only during the fourth sub-race that
we find purely worldly kings, kings who are no longer
associated with priestly power. This fourth sub-race
has its first beginning in the Greek folk. It is in Greece
that we first see worldly kings, and, as the Greek
colonies become established, in them too we find
worldly kings.
The saga of the Trojan War is a representation of
the spread of Hellenism; it is the mythical presentation
of an esoteric truth, the efflorescence of the fourth sub-
race of the fifth root-race, and the replacement of the
priestly rulership, now in its last stage, by the purely
worldly rulership.
That is very subtly indicated at the beginning of the
Trojan saga. You probably know that matter is always
represented by water I need only call attention to the
familiar Nicene Creed, which says suffered under
Pontius Pilate. As the esotericist knows, this is an in-
correct rendering. What it really says is suffered
in pontoi pilatoi, which means merely in compressed
water, and signifies descended in order to suffer in
matter. This sentence in the Creed which is said all
over Christendom has come about through the word
pontoi having become Pontius. When Thales states
that everything has originated from water, he is refer-
ring to the comprehensive physical matter of which
alone we can treat when we would speak of physical
things. He is using the term water for physical matter.
Physical matter is to be the all-important thing for
those who now take over guidance. The predominance
of physical matter then led to there being worldly
kings. Previously there had only been kings who stood
in relationship with the Divine. Peleus is the king who
is to rule on the physical plane, deriving his strength
from the physical plane. This is represented by his
marriage with the goddess Thetis the marriage of
the leader of mankind with the matter of the physical
plane, with the goddess of water, the goddess of the
sea.
And from this union sprang Achilles. He is the first
initiate of this kind. Hence he is invulnerable except in
the heel. All those who were initiated in the fourth sub-
race were vulnerable in some spot. It is only in the fifth
sub-race that there will be initiates so advanced as not
to be vulnerable anywhere. Achilles is plunged into the
Styx. That means to be dead to the earthly and with-
drawn to a higher plane of vision.
There we have an important transition. Spiritual life
descends for the first time in the middle of the fourth
sub-race. For the first time we have to do with physical
struggle. Thereby something remarkable comes about.
The earlier leaders of the world were free from kama,
for they had had to divest themselves of everything
connected with kama during their previous initiation
stages up to their spiritual initiation. So long as there
were priests in the old sense, it was not possible for
any trace of kama to enter into the guidance of the
world. Kama caused separation, caused beings to turn
against one another. Earlier, too, men who were op-
posed to one another were to be found, but that was
not due to kama-manas, but happened because men
were not advanced enough to distinguish between
good and evil. At that time men could not measure the
fight by the standard of good and evil. They could not
say war is good or war is bad any more than they
could Say a lion was good or bad; good and evil first
began in the moment when kama-manas descended,
so that kama worked together with manas, and man
became his own master and turned consciously to-
wards or against his fellow man. It was then that con-
scious war arose. This is indicated in the saga, where
we are told that all the gods were present at the mar-
riage of Peleus with the sea-goddess Thetis except
one, a goddess who hitherto had had no influence on
the earth, because the stage had not yet been reached
when the union of manas with kama occurred. Now on
the physical plane the goddess Eris, the goddess of dis-
cord, begins to be active. She tosses an apple, discord,
into human nature. By so doing she was the sole cause
of the first war in the fifth root-race which took place
with full human responsibility. In the Trojan war the
mythical comes to expression. Before that, strife was
determined by instinct.
All that followed, according to the myth, is only a
further elaboration of a tendency that was already
there. The most beautiful apple is said to be the Eris
apple. The three goddesses, Hera, Pallas Athene and
Aphrodite that is to Say, all that earlier was divine
soul disagree among themselves, for the three god-
desses signify different stages of soul-life on the higher,
spiritual plane. Now things are no longer decided on
the higher level, but Paris is called upon to make the
decision from the stand-point of the physical plane. Ev-
erything descends to the physical plane. The decision
too descends to the level of the physical. But some-
thing comes about through this. Here lies the crux of
the matter, this is where it becomes clear what is at
stake. What is it that we have to face because the deci-
sion is made from the standpoint of the physical plane?
The union of manas with kama. Hitherto man had had
a certain relationship with kama, single beings had
turned against one another, but this had not yet the
significance of good and evil. But now kama unites it-
self with manas, and the deed becomes conscious. You
know that the densest kama fell away from the earth
and accompanies it as a satellite which is our moon.
Hence in the language of esotericism we might call all
that accompanies us to-day in the moon the leitmotif
of the lower nature; it is what draws us downwards,
the great signpost showing us what we can come to if
we succumb to our lower nature.
Thus, what is momentous in the union between
manas and kama during the fourth sub-race is that the
man who has to make the decision unites himself di-
rectly with the kama of the moon, with Selene. Selene
is none other than Helen. The union of Paris with He-
len in the fourth sub-race of the fifth root-race is a
symbolical expression of the marriage between kama
and manas. The man endowed with manas, finding
himself on the physical plane, seizes hold of the moon
principle. You meet this everywhere in writings of an
esoteric nature. It is also a Helen who drags down Si-
mon Magus and unites him with the element of kama.
Thereby is brought about the full union between
the principles of manas and of kama on the fully con-
scious physical plane. It corresponds not only with
what the Trojan War stands for symbolically but also
with what really happened. The Trojan War did actually
take place. Although it was a series of physical events,
these events have a symbolic meaning as well, they are
mystical facts. The concept of mystical fact compre-
hends not merely mystical content, but a mystical con-
tent which runs its course outwardly on the physical
plane.
Please try to understand this. At the beginning of
the sixth root-race an influence will have developed,
not in higher spheres, but in the sphere of the present-
day conscious mind; in the fifth sub-race this influence
is still in its infancy, but it is nevertheless already devel-
oping. It is something which emanates from the musi-
cal element. For the fifth root-race music will be not
merely art, but the means of expression for quite other
things than the purely artistic. Here is something that
points to the influence of a specific principle on the
physical plane. The most significant impulse by those
directly initiated in the fifth sub-race will, to begin with,
be given solely in the sphere of music. What has to
flow in is not astral, but it is something of great signifi-
cance in the sphere of the mental life of the fifth root-
race. It is something that the human intelligence will
come to recognise as important, something which has
been called the Kundalini fire.1 It is a force which to-
day still slumbers in man, but which will gradually gain
more and more importance. To-day it already has a
great importance, it has a great influence upon what
we perceive through the sense of hearing. During the
further development in the sixth sub-race of the fifth
root-race the Kundalini fire will acquire great influence
on what lives in the human heart. The human heart will
really have this fire. At first this seems to be mere sym-
bolism but man will then really be permeated by a
force which will live in his heart, so that during the
sixth root-race he will no longer make a distinction be-
tween his own well-being and the well-being of the
whole. So deeply will man be permeated by the Kun-
dalini fire I He will follow the principle of love as his
own innermost nature.
In the seventh sub-race of the fifth root-race the
whole of mankind will be in a real chaos, for the root-
race will then be near to its collapse. But a small num-
ber of the seventh sub-race of the fifth root-race will
become the true sons of the Kundalini fire. They will be
permeated with its full power. They will provide the
material, they will pass it on to the leaders of those
who will develop: man further. Thus is the fifth root-
race directed to the heights which kindle the divine
fire; thus is kindled out of inmost depths with holy fer-
vour the divine principle which no longer separates
man from man, but evokes brotherliness as far as the
human understanding reaches. And thus far shall
brotherliness be quickened in our own root-race and in
the next. This fire will live in single individuals; and in
those who are initiated in the course of the fifth root-
race there already lives a spark of this divine fire which
is the capacity for brotherliness and will put an end to
separation.
But it is only in its beginning, it is still hidden,
veiled by the existing life of separation. The power of
kama still conceals the Kundalini fire. And because it
emerges in veiled form as premonition, as foreboding,
in the immediate future it will assume another charac-
ter. On the plane of illusion the divine fire is the divine
wrath. When the whole of mankind is permeated by
this brotherliness it will become the divine love. But so
long as it makes itself felt in individuals as zeal, it is the
divine wrath. It asserts itself by working with great
power in individuals and since the others are not yet
ripe enough, it manifests itself as the divine wrath.
The poet, the initiate, who speaks of such things,
always expresses this at the outset of his poem. As I
pointed out to you in the case of the Odyssey, its main
theme is announced in the first lines. And in the Iliad
too you will find that the blind poet indicates his theme
at the very beginning. Sing, O Muse, of the wrath of
the divine hero Achilles. It is of the Kundalini fire that
the poet speaks when he says this. Only in the fifth
race can it be thus spoken of. At the very outset, when
the priest Calchas takes the side of the priest-king of
Apollo, you see the wrath flare up between Agamem-
non and Achilles. And what is it that is overthrown? A
priest-king state. Troy is a state in which the king is un-
der the influence of the ancient priestly rulership. The
rulership is replaced by the purely worldly principle.
There you have a perfect illustration of the fact that
what is victorious is nothing else but worldly clever-
ness. The initiate of the fourth sub-race is Odysseus,
the cunning one, who receives initiation in the course
of his wanderings. He was not previously an initiate, he
became one only as a result of the experiences he went
through. In the strangling of the priest of Apollo by the
snake you see the same thing symbolised. The snake is
the purely worldly cleverness, it ensnares Laocoon, the
priest, the representative of the old Trojan priesthood.
If you understand all this you see that the Trojan
saga, like so many others, is simply adhering to a true
world-historic continuity. This is the secret that the
Mysteries have guarded. They have shown the great
events in the history of the world to the initiates from
this lofty standpoint. In the Mysteries themselves such
events were plainly taught, and in the old Greek Mys-
teries the ancient ones that long preceded the
Eleusinian Mysteries this important moment, the be-
ginning of the fourth sub-race of the fifth root-race and
its whole significance, was among other things brought
before the pupils.
To those who are not conversant with theosophical
teachings this sounds fantastic. But it is a fact. The Tro-
jan War was shown in the Mysteries before it took
place. This is the essential principle of the Mysteries,
and it is this which makes it necessary to keep them
secret, because they reveal not only the great events of
the past, but also events to come. These were not re-
vealed to satisfy curiosity or the undue thirst for knowl-
edge. Those who are initiated into the Mysteries are
called upon to take a part in the fashioning of world-
history. They have to derive from the Mysteries the
forces to enable them to do this. That is the signifi-
cance of the Mysteries. Hence their betrayal would
mean the public announcement by someone of what is
to happen in the future Anyone doing this causes utter
confusion among his fellow men. Suppose something
important is to happen in five hundred years time. In
order for this to come about mankind needs to be pre-
pared.
Individuals receive impulses enabling them to bring
mankind to the point at which they will live under
other conditions, to the point at which they will be-
come ripe enough to adapt themselves to the transfor-
mation and to bear it. The initiates are in a position to
endure these conditions and to further them. Suppose
that one were to bring about an event straightway,
years before it was due. Then mankind would not be
mature enough for it. Every Mystery will one day under
quite different conditions become common property,
but it must be under other conditions. To-day there are
still Mysteries which will not be revealed until the sixth
root-race. The next root-race will live in quite other
conditions. Universal brotherhood will then be some-
thing quite different. Suppose that to-day someone
were to be told a secret that is only suitable for a being
with the quality of brotherliness. He would misuse it.
There are no absolute Mysteries, there are only things
which under certain conditions cannot yet be borne,
and men who cannot yet bear them.
That is the essence of the Mystery. It translates it-
self into the external course of world-history. Those
who understand something of this are terribly afraid
lest the initiates should in some way, through lack of
foresight, betray something too soon. It was always the
case that the betrayal of the Mysteries bore the sever-
est penalties. In ancient times the penalty was death. It
was not the priests who exacted this, for they knew
that a betrayal cannot actually happen. But those who
knew something about the matter from the outside,
and were not themselves initiated, feared the betrayal
of the Mysteries. Socrates himself was a victim of such
an attitude.

Note on The Trojan War

1. The expression Kundalini fire is used by
Dr. Steiner in the first edition of his
book Knowledge of the Higher
Worlds. In later editions he replaced
the term by another which is trans-
lated in the 1937 English edition as
the spiritual perceptive force in the
organ of the heart, (see p.185).